Last summer our mobile solutions division teamed up with Alvarado ISD’s Director of Technology, Kyle Berger, to create the district app for Alvarado school district. Mobile Education has been a hot topic over the last few years and the chatter shows no sign of slowing down in 2012.

Mobile apps are a great tool for education in a variety of ways. Whether your providing textbooks online, engaging students in educational games, or creating additional revenue streams through in-app advertising and booster club sales, apps are a powerful way to engage teachers, students, and parents right in the palm of your hand.

SorrisoOrtho, created by WorldLink Apps, is intended to WOW! the orthodontic experience for the patient, the parent, and the orthodontist. SorrisoOrtho captures your smile throughout your entire orthodontic experience and creates a fun video for you to share with your friends and family. Let the countdown begin to beautiful, pearly whites!

WorldLink partnered with industry leading orthodontists to create an effective application that will keep you on track, on time, and in touch with your dentist during the entire process.

Orthodontists use SorrisoOrtho to give instructions to kids and parents by recording videos right from the patient’s chair! If mom can’t make the appointment – send the video. Patients can also send treatment updates to keep dentists involved in the process.

Keeping your customers socially engaged with mobile apps!

There’s been a lot of chatter recently about the sustainability of social media and mobile apps. Over the last decade the term “social media” has evolved into more than a place to connect with friends, but into a vehicle to connect with brands and businesses of every size on a deeper level. Social media is more than a fad, it’s a layer of communication between businesses and their customers that is now becoming an expectation.

So where does mobility fit into the equation? Not only are your customers online, they’re browsing the web more than ever via their mobile phones.

The Mobile Landscape

Mobile usage across the US has reached an all time high and even though Smartphones have yet to dominate the mobile market, usage is seeing a steady upward climb.

27% of global mobile users have a Smartphone (up 60% from the previous year)

by 2014 the mobile internet is expected to exceed desktop usage

one half of all local searches occur on a mobile device

29% of mobile users will scan a mobile tag for coupon offers

86% of mobile users are on their mobile device while watching TV

91% of mobile users access their device to socialize

The Social Landscape

It’s a fact that our world is more social than ever. Sharing, tweeting, searching…consumers have information right at their fingertips, and they’re using it. Brands that aren’t using social media are missing out on important conversations – conversations that could include negative or positive reviews about your products and services.

Let’s go to the numbers:

Social Media Users

Facebook: 750 million

Twitter: 200 million registered

LinkedIn: 115 million

Google+: 43 million

Foursquare: 10 million

Yelp: over 20 million reviews

The Connection

CONNECT –> LISTEN –> IMPLEMENT

Whether or not social media is your cup of tea the fact is your customers are talking about you today! So what are you doing about it?

Let’s take an example of a small pool store who isn’t engaged in social media.

[Insert name] local pool store hasn’t been very kind to some loyal neighborhood customers. Let’s call them John and Jane for this example. John and Jane have been loyal customers for years, supporting the local pool store instead of the nationwide chain up the street. This week John went in for his usual water inspection and the store employees didn’t feel like dealing with John’s small request today. They shrugged him off and treated John like a small fish in their big pond. John demanded to speak with the owner who then came out and expressed to John that they were busy today and he wasn’t a big enough customer.

Outraged, John went home and vented his frustrations to Jane. Jane, who had also been in the store many times (to purchase merchandise), angrily grabbed her Smartphone and started tweeting, posting, and reviewing. The local pool store wasn’t listed on a very popular review site, so Jane’s review was the very first one that showed up. Soon it started to spread that the local pool store wasn’t very neighborhood friendly, and that customers might be better off at the national chain down the street. A year later the local pool store saw the review and reached out to John to please remove it because it was effecting business in a negative way.

Not only was the owner of the pool store unaware of the bad review for more than a year, but his lack of engagement in social media was actually hurting his brand in return.

So now that the importance of social media has been hammered in, what does this have to do with mobile apps? Not only are customers using mobile technology to preach about your brand, when they want to engage with you they expect you to be mobile.

Establishing a mobile presence, albeit a mobile site or mobile app, will keep not only your brand engaged with your customer base, but it will create additional opportunities to market and promote your brand.

I am very pleased to announce that our much anticipated mobile music application has been released on iTunes. The app is free for a limited time only!

The app has been available for less then a week and Apple already selected it as a “New and Noteworthy” application!! The development and marketing team have worked really hard over the last year to develop a fun and intuitive application for music lovers of every level. We’re all really proud and excited about the accomplishment and hope you enjoy the app as much as we do!!

Description

Grammy award-winning music producer Jeff “Madjef” Taylor brings his experience and musical talents to the iPhone! Madjef’s MusicLab is a simple and intuitive app for ALL levels of musical talent – from novice up to expert. You can easily create beats from Madjef’s original sound kits, add your vocals, mix your song, and share your song with your friends!

Madjef has produced music for artists such as Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Boyz II Men, Barry White, Gladys Knight, Patti Labelle, Lionel Richie, New Edition, Karyn White, Mint Condition, and many others. Madjef’s web site www.madjef.com attracts a large following of loyal fans and people just like you who are interested in making music.

Key features:

Create unique music using Madjef’s 15 built-in sound kits!

Record vocals

Amaze your friends by sharing your song creation via email!

Demo function to become familiar with sounds in each kit

Load Kits function to select specific Madjef kits for the Beat Pad

Beat Pad:

Create beat patterns – pad touch plays sound

27 sounds available simultaneously (9 sounds per 3 banks) on the Beat Pad

If you’ve had the pleasure of experiencing the MASSIVE event Canton, TX calls First Monday Trade Days, then you understand our excitement for being chosen to develop their mobile application.

Canton is located about 60 miles east of Dallas. Every month, thousands of vendors attract hundreds of thousands of visitors to take their pick at everything from home furnishings, clothing, arts & crafts, produce, to much much more. The outdoor extravaganza takes place Thursday through Sunday before the first Monday of every month.

I had the pleasure of accompanying the app development team to Canton to view the site (s) for myself (market research!!!) and it’s nothing like I’ve ever seen before. What started as a simple flea market, more than a century ago, has turned into a shoppers haven.

So head down to Canton and check it our for yourself. I would definitely give yourself a full day at least…and even then you probably won’t scratch the surface. It’s a great event and WorldlLink is looking forward to being a part of it.

Like this:

I’m excited to announce our new offering to businesses ready to make their mark on the mobile application market. WorldLink has created a streamlined process for quick and efficient development of mobile applications for businesses. This process can be applied to any industry and is fully customizable.

Process & Features

The application offers the following basic features:

About Us

Services

Testimonials & Feedback

News

Twitter

Web Page

Contact Us

Request Information

Guide Me

Once our development team receives the completed work order from the client, with all of the proper information, they can turn it around for submission to iTunes in 5 business days (with the above features only). iTunes doesn’t provide an exact time frame, but most applications are usually approved within 2-3 weeks. Applications developed for Android do not require an approval process and have an immediate turnaround once submitted to the Android Marketplace.

If the client is interested in additional customized features, they can be worked in for an additional cost, and with additional development time added to the project.

Having your own business app is not only a great marketing and branding channel, but the technology being integrated into today’s smartphones continues to grow increasingly smarter. From the ability to send out daily/weekly push notifications to your customers, to even having the option to purchase items using an app, there are so many available functions that could be implemented to really push your business app to the next level.

Our creative team walks every client through the entire process from start to finish including any additional brainstorming sessions you might request. We offer all levels of apps from basic to intermediate.

An Example:

Our development team just completed our own app to help showcase how simple and effective a business app can be.

Check out the screen shots below for some examples of the aforementioned features.

Customized launch icon (typically company logo):

Screen Shot Examples (showcasing previously mentioned features):

Platforms:

WorldLink Apps’ services include app development on the following platforms: